


Hung With Cedar

by Omeacatl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Fluff, M/M, Magic, avengers avenging, saying please, total emotional collapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:13:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omeacatl/pseuds/Omeacatl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something that I can do for you Captain Rogers, but I cannot tell you what it is and you must ask for me to do it. </p><p>"Take me to Bucky." </p><p>Dr. Strange looked grim, resigned, but he lifted his hand and said, "Yes. That is what, and all, that I may do for you. Here is James Buchanan Barnes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hung With Cedar

Stories must happen in their own way, in their own time.  
Fate cannot be cheated. There are rules.  
Magic, seemingly a way to bend the rules, is actually a deeper nesting into them, is actually a complicated consequence of them, and its practitioners are subject to stricter prohibitions than lay persons. 

Stephen Strange regarded his position as Sorceror Supreme as a kind of martyrdom.  
He is bound to experience that central lesson, of the limits of even great power, over and over.  
He is charged with correcting the errors of his fellows, of trying to make them realize how they should view their seeming agency, when they should use it. 

Dr. Strange knew, eventually, about every spell that was cast on Earth.  
Petty prayers to raise dead pets.  
Hidden enclaves to maintain state control. 

Even when the magicians did not know they were doing magic, if the energies of a person's actions, intentions, rose past the level of ritual or art, or science, they came into the ken of Stephen Strange and he could see them.

He was fascinated by them, captive to them, they became his dreams and his obsessions. 

Bucky loved Steve so much that it kept him healthy, that it made him well.  
Dr. Erksine's unreproduceable genius, his experiment, changed the body of Steven Rogers so that he could go to war.  
The pain of separation and the.. inversion, of his great love drove Steve Rogers into the sea, closed the ice around him.  
The misery of Zola found shattered Bucky Barnes and enshrouded him. 

Stephen Strange had dreams about power.  
He knew that miracles compounded with miracles, and in his sleep he saw the fractal curling of them, a life once touched in that special way growing outwards towards further complications. 

Magic does not change fate, it is part of fate.  
Magic is the law, not an exception to the law. 

Stephen Strange was not a lawyer, nor a doctor of medicine any more. 

When he dreamt about Steven Rogers losing interest in the world, when he dreamt about Captain America suffering, wandering, and about Bucky Barnes running through the wind, he saw the enchantments they were made of. 

Spells of forgetting forged in a Red Room, spells of courage for a faltering army.  
Love so strong that it could heal the sick.  
Loss smothering invincible men. 

Dr. Strange wanted to make a difference, but there were rules. 

 

\--------------------------------------------

 

Steve was one hundred percent sure that he was under psychic assault.  
He had been moving through the market because the whole day was a bust and he liked being polite to strangers and he had all this money now so why not buy flowers, why not look at flowers for a little while.  
For fifteen minutes by his estimate small pieces of reality were not conforming to his expectations in very specific ways.  
He had seen passerbys not paying attention to what they should have been, and one or two had made eye contact when they shouldn't have.  
His sense of his own presence in the market was too central, as though it was a scene in which he was being asked to star instead of the pleasant throng of anonymity that had been the draw of the place to start with. 

He knew what he had to do, starting with assessing how compromised he already was by whatever was happening.  
Find a place to test his own reactions, hope that he really was moving where he was telling his body to go. 

Steve controlled his breathing, completed his transaction with the clerk and tried to find a seat at a cafe.  
He opened his phone but a man who hadn't been in front of him before appeared and put his hand over the very small device.  
Steve smiled at him and said, "Good morning. Are you alright?" 

Strange said it all at once, "He has come to.. have you, Stephen Rogers. He is here to own you. I will not allow it , we will not allow it but you must accept my help Stephen Rogers, Captain America." 

Steve nodded and moved his hand slowly out from under the stranger's and said, "Alright." 

In his mind he tried to focus on the fact that he was probably still about where he had first noticed the deformity of the situation, that his real body was probably prone a little ways in front of the florist's stall and that if he had been moved he was very likely still nearby.  
When one of the Avengers made contact and he did not respond they would begin to look for him, meanwhile he could try and learn something about this apparent lunatic. 

Steve said, "You went through some trouble to speak with me, Mr.. " and he paused to look significantly at the older man, a place where he could put his name if he wanted, but the other man did not speak and Steve continued, "Maybe you'd like to tell me who you mean, and what you want." 

Street traffic moved around them as though they did not exist, although no other customer came to claim their table.  
Steve registered that this person in front of him was wearing a cape, and through the thickening numbness of fight or flight stress that was rising in him he could feel a chuckle. 

Bucky would have had some very dry things to say about a cape on a villain.  
Steve's mind flinched the same tired predictable way that it always did when half a hundred times per day he stumbled into audience with the pain in the middle of his life. 

Strange winced, and said, "I will not say his name."  
In the air between them hanging like smoke was an image of James Buchanan Barnes surrounded by teeth and gristle, a cyst, a scar, sketched in light and vapor like Tony was projecting data as he loved to do. 

Steve swallowed hard and his eyes went flat. 

"Stop that." 

Dr. Strange held up his hands, as though helpless, and said, "I want to help you, Stephen Rogers, please accept my help." 

Steve couldn't take his eyes off the face of the picture of his lost best friend, sleeping fitfully far away and alone.  
He said, "I will make you stop that." 

"My name is Dr. Stephen Strange - "  
Steve's mind, somewhere, logged that name as being on HYDRA's hitlist but he launched himself anyway at the other man through the picture of Bucky that he knew wasn't real, hoping, desperate for his fist to be real, to really make contact but the table blew back and Steve was blown with it tumbling away into a crouch as the cape flared around Dr. Strange and the amulet at his throat began to glow.  
Steve smelled something like incense, something like dried flowers, and he felt his understanding of the situation change.  
He thought of Thor. 

Not a psychic - a, "Wizard." 

Dr. Strange smiled, and Steve's mind raced.  
SHIELD had failed him, and his friends were trying but they were not going to find Bucky although Steve could not stop looking.  
In the stories, if you asked a genie for something it betrayed and killed you. One was not to wish on the monkey's paw.  
But if there was a chance - why shouldn't there be.. other resources, in this wild universe. 

"You're a.. wizard." 

The smile was still on Dr. Strange's face but it was small and sad.  
He said, "There is something that I can do for you Captain Rogers, but I cannot tell you what it is and you must ask for me to do it." 

Steve thought about the finger twitching down on the paw, the zombie that he must not summon, the hurt that he must not do to Bucky, and his total incapacitating need to just, find him, get to him, not to fail him.  
He could do this, he could be smart about this, if he didn't ask for too much, if he.. 

"Take me to Bucky." 

Dr. Strange looked grim, resigned, but he lifted his hand and said, "Yes. That is what, and all, that I may do for you. Here is James Buchanan Barnes." 

 

\--------------------------------

 

Steve had a sense that the space he woke up in was a bunker, the air was still and the sound quality oddly effected as though, he surmised, from the weight of deep earth.  
It was totally dark until a torch sprang to life suddenly with no noise at all and Steve had a half second's fragmented view of the light up through some man's features before the beam was on him. 

The man came at him but when Steve saw the shine of the metal arm and the fall of his dark hair he stopped paying attention to the threat.  
He felt a metal hand on his shoulder, shoving him back against the wall, felt that body move into his space full of menace but the reality of Bucky yes existing to protect him occured so strongly to Steve that it rolled him over and destroyed him. In Steve's normally strategic mind it just went on and on, one thing only - bucky.  
Bucky. Buckybuckybuckybuck- 

He said, "Bucky!" and the arm detaining him did not move, there was no reaction from the other man.  
Steve said, "Bucky! Bucky!" 

The Winter Soldier entity recoiled, drew back and away in fear of impossible intruder and the naked display of emotion in front of him, but he did not run or strike to kill.  
Dimly, through his constant dreaming awareness he recognized his mission's parameters, knew that he had drug this creature from the river, that he had been tasked with killing him by some dead master. 

The entity dared to meet eyes, blank ones into wide bright ones, and said what he knew for sure, "This Asset is.. code-named, The Winter Soldier."

Steve's face crumpled, and he shook his head and put his hands on Bucky's arm which was still touching him and shook all over, tugging at the arm without any of the force he could actually exert.  
Steve said, "Noo, no, no," and curled into himself and wept. 

The Winter Soldier held still against the wall and struggled to process how to proceed.  
This was not entirely unlike an.. interrogation.  
There were immediate needs that his former mission might be able to provide if motivated properly and not completely breaking down, but this mess was unacceptable.  
Captain Rogers made no motion to escape, no motion to protect himself.  
The entity's face was carefully neutral but he felt the skin he wore crawl, like something was moving up through him, like his throat wanted to close without an allergen. 

Steve said, "Bucky. Bucky please look at me. Please know me. Bucky I love you I love you - "  
The Winter Soldier dropped him immediately as though burned, he didn't understand what any of this meant, he felt soaked through in some hazardous chemical, some pathogen from this compromised soldier in front of him. 

He said, "Stop. Captain - " but couldn't continue because Steve wailed, "STEVE" and kept a steady hitching sob like he couldn't get enough breath in his body. 

Without the Chair to wipe him the Soldier was experiencing distress.  
He could feel the things that the chair removed from him returning, and he knew about anatomy enough to be afraid.  
Blood was flowing into places it was needed but that it hadn't been in so long.  
He felt his arm like a horror, like the mask on his face which he ripped off. He had suffered.. trauma, that the chair had magnified while disguising the symptoms of.

He had immediate needs. The Winter Soldier said, "Steve."  
Steve said, "BUCKY," and hugged onto him and smiled at him like he had set Steve's family free.  
Like he was the only warm thing in the cold. 

Something inside the Winter Soldier Entity longed to be looked at like that, basked in it.  
Bucky was alarmed at how much he wanted to roll around in the feeling of Steve adoring him.  
The entity could not account for where the.. impressions of the Captain his mission were coming from.  
Every mission had seemed to come from the grey blue sky, but there was a quality to these that threatened the Winter Soldier, made him fear for the chair and the forgetting. 

If he dwelled on this feeling, if he gave into it, they would punish him.  
The entity was afraid of Steve, instinctively, but he needed to act now.  
He lunged at the sobbing man in front of him and pressed him back to the wall and said, "Say it again." 

Wondering, Steve put his hands back onto Bucky's arms and said, "I love you Bucky. Please come back to me." 

The Winter Soldier was an accomplished infiltrator enough to pretend to be someone.  
'Bucky' would adjust his stance so that he was supporting Steve less aggressively and when he did Steve pushed back into the contact, kept them pressed tightly together.  
"Oh, please, Bucky, Bucky."  
Bucky touched his own face and said, "Steve, I - " 

 

There was a crash and a tiny body hurtled into the room and Bucky surged away because he recognized the clear lethality of its movements.  
Measures of danger were not strictly linear with mass.  
He did not worry that this intruder would.. throw him .. but the sudden light from outside glittered from a few mirrored points on her, sweeping toward Steve and unchaining him before Bucky had recovered from his stagger. 

She said, calmly, "He has unknowingly ingested a tracker."  
Bucky said nothing, Steve couldn't take his eyes off of her, the Black Widow casually come from nowhere, impossible. 

Natasha saw Steve not moving and said, "Are you here against your will Rogers?"  
Steve shook his head, eyes wet with tears and sobbed something unintelligible but she managed to make out .  
"to save him." 

Bucky rocked on his feet toward Steve's distress, but he could not get past the woman who was still touching him.  
Bucky said, "An Asset.. known to the Heads as The Black Widow, and as belonging to the." Bucky paused significantly as though trying very hard to get the words out, "Red. Room."  
Steve sobbed a small sound and Bucky swallowed and Natasha spat and began moving Steve toward the door.  
She said, "I need a moment alone with our Stephen, Zaichik. Please, do not run."  
Steve tensed as though for combat and for a dizzying heartbreak of a second Natasha could not tell whether it was to support her or Barnes in an immanent conflict.  
She kept her eyes on Bucky and moved her lips to touch Steve's ear, she said. "This is incredibly inconvienent captain." 

Bucky said, "When did you set the device?"  
She sneered at him and he leveled a weapon at her in one breath.  
While he had been aiming she had taken off her glove and showed her open palm to Steve who watched them both with wide glassy eyes,  
Natasha said, "I will always come for him," and placed her hand on Bucky's face and said, "as I would have come for you, Mal'Chik."  
Tears rolled down her face but did not blur her vision.  
Bucky said, "Fast response for a transmitter," and smiled a very painful smile and looked down for a single second at the arm he did not clearly recall acquiring and she dove at him, tangled his riposte back against him and wreathed the prosthesis in crackling static while Steve tackled them both.  
They came apart with Natasha across the room with her glove back on and Steve laying one hand flat against the spitting metal, hissing softly. 

Bucky whispered, "Thank you," to her, and then took a really ragged breath and twisted around to hug Steve close uncaring of the voltage in the metal or the dead weight of it, he said, "Steve? Stevie I'm ok, I'm ok Steve you're alright I've got you, I know it was," he choked a little and said, "a little rough for a while but we're ok, I'm here."  
The two of them pawed and moved each other until they were slumped into one corner still assuring each other that everything was safe and good now. 

Natasha nodded and looked toward the ragged hole in the wall she had come through and smirked, retrieved a cell phone, said, "Ok." 

 

\--------------------------------

 

In the vapor of the Astral Plane Strange often felt like a goldfish, like a small child in a glass bottomed boat.  
There were shadows out there, moving, huge, leviathans as sinister and alien as Chitauri cruisers - more so, entities of pure psychic accretion.  
Their attention was not always malevolent but it was always terrifying, and sometimes it -was- malevolent. 

Strange could 'see' the 'color' of the 'light' change around his person, something flickering at the edges of the space his presence defined here in the Aether.  
He heard the hushed voices of enslaved priests chanting their masters name, hateful, reverent, Dormammu of the Dark places, a manifestation of toxic pragmatism, the sinking fear that the universe trends toward tragedy and ineptitude.  
He imagined he could see hands around the space he occupied, as though he was in the cupped palms of that creature. 

Strange willed himself to look into the bleak and eager eyes of Dormammu and said through clenched teeth, "You may not -touch- them." 

His voice was the voice of all children, men and women through all history, an unbroken chain of hands united that together were louder than the thronged prayers for Dormammu, Dormammu, Dormammu.  
Strange's power swelled, Saturnine, Jovian, until he was the nuclear heart of a galaxy, strong resolve fierce anger and rejection. 

The cackodemon snatched its hands away and was gone. 

 

\--------------------------------

 

Fury softened his features meeting the Captain's gaze in the sky walk hallway of a SHIELD headquarter facility.  
He said, "You must know how happy I am you found your friend Captain."  
Steve smiled and lowered his eyes.  
Fury said. "I'm very confident that we will be able to - "  
Steve looked up through his lashes at Fury and shook his head very minutely. 

Fury stuttered a little but finished saying, "- Vet him very quickly and get him back to you. When I think about what - "  
Steve shook his head more significantly, looking a little incredulous toward Nick. 

Nick Fury felt a frission of guilt at his growing suspicion that Captain America hadn't considered the angles, actually allowed himself  
to think that he and Agent Romanoff bringing the Winter Soldier in from the cold meant he would immediately have his friend back.  
Fury sighed against a potentially ugly scene and said, "Captain I will be able to get you visitation with him very soon I promise." 

Steve said, "There will never be an organization's control between me and Bucky for one moment ever again Director."  
Fury paused and narrowed his eyes.  
He said, "Are you -threatening- something here, Captain Rogers?" 

Steve said, "One."  
A radio on his person said, "Two," and then in another voice said, "Three," and Nick's eyes widened back again when he recognized Natasha's voice with laughter in it. 

After a second the radio said, "No signal, I am holding ok? no signal," With Clint's voice and Steve's smile turned fond and he said, "There's no chance, say 'four',"  
and the radio said, "Four," immediately, and then "Five."  
"Six."  
"Seven." 

Nick stood very still when Steve reached out to pat his shoulder.  
Steve said. "Thank you for meeting with me, Director," and walked out in to the sun.  
Nick did not move again until Hill arrived to extract him. 

 

\---------

 

Sometimes Strange thought that Bucky could tell he was being scryed.  
Strange didn't want to invade his privacy but the strength of the magic surrounding the once wintered soldier was so strong that it's draw for Strange was unavoidable. 

Love so strong that it mended the wounded. 

He hoped that they would not mind that he could see them, sometimes.  
He hoped he was a welcome presence.  
He thought of Dormammu, drawn to Earth's bright bodies.. 

Bucky, alone in a room, began arranging note cards on the table in front of him in a spread that might have been tarot had they not been covered in entirely ordinary short hand. The door to the room moved and Strange knew that it would be Steve.  
Bucky smiled and then Strange smiled himself and was free to look away. 

 

\----


End file.
